Montague woman is 81, with 13 children, and knows how to bag a buck

Chronicle/Kendra Stanley-MillsJaine Spring, 81, of Montague poses with the 8-point buck she killed with a crossbow during bow hunting season this year. Spring, who is blind in one eye, shot the buck right through the heart. "I get a bigger kick out her getting a deer than when I do, " said her husband, Ron Spring, who taught her how to hunt.
A hot pink picture frame in the shape of a number “1” rests on the kitchen table of Ron and Jaine Spring’s Montague home.

Inside the frame is a picture of Jaine kneeling next to an 8-point buck she snagged this fall with a crossbow.

Guys in the Spring family think it’s a pretty impressive catch. But what’s more impressive, Ron says, is what gives meaning to the shape of the frame. On several occasions in a large family that loves to hunt, Jaine has snagged the first buck of the season. And she’s 81.

“I get a bigger kick out of her getting a deer than I do myself,” said Ron, also 81. “She’s pulling a bow that a lot of men couldn’t pull.”

As the two sat side-by-side on a recent afternoon, they laughed and momentarily traveled back in time to Jaine’s first experiences in the woods.

Ron and Jaine married in 1999 when both were in their 70s. Ron had been hunting all his life, and each fall, at the time bow season launched, he’d camp with relatives at a spot about 15 miles north of Baldwin. There, they’d spend several days scouring the woods for deer.

“It’s like a family reunion; we’ve done that every year,” he said, picturing the dozen or so trailers lined up next to each other and the nightly campfire gatherings.

Chronicle/Kendra Stanley-MillsJaine
Spring, 81, and her husband, Ron Spring, also 81, pose with a deer
mount that hangs in their living room. "I'm going to hunt until I can't
walk no more," said Jaine. The mount is from a 10-point buck Ron shot
30 years ago.
Jaine stayed back at the campsite during the first couple hunts, but that grew old. As a lifelong outdoors enthusiast who raised 13 kids and managed a farm largely on her own, Jaine wasn’t used to sitting on the sidelines. And when the two married and moved to Montague, she sold parts of her Hesperia farm and had to adjust to spending more time indoors.

After three years of opting out of the annual hunting trip, Jaine had had enough. She told Ron it was time she learned to shoot with a bow herself. Ron set up a couple targets in the back yard, and soon noticed Jaine had some talent — and a large amount of it, at that.

“I never lost an arrow,” Jaine said, recalling her efficiency in hitting the targets. “I thought to myself, if I could do the job, I could probably get a deer.”

Jaine was trekking through the woods, compound bow in hand, within two months of the time she first started practicing. And she snagged a deer that first season.

Though glaucoma kept her sidelined last year — she has little to no sight now in her right eye — Jaine was determined to get back in the woods this fall.

She remembers perfectly the night of Oct. 14. Ron left her in a tent near their home in Montague about three hours before dusk.

“I said, ‘Please, heavenly father, let me see a buck,’ ” she said, explaining how she settled in with high hopes but low expectations.“I thought I was going to get nothing, but then, here he comes.”

And what a sight that deer was. Jaine was in awe.

“You wouldn’t believe how many points he had — wonderful, beautiful,” she said.

The animal stopped and put his nose in the air as Jaine closed one eye and released her arrow. It pierced the deer right through the heart.

Ron showed up minutes later, as dusk set in, and found Jaine crouching next to her harvest. Once again, it was the Spring family’s first buck of the season, and Ron made sure to mark the moment with a photo.

Jaine said she she’ll be hitting the woods with her bow “’til the day I die.”

After years of farming, staying around the house is difficult, something Janie compares to being cooped up in prison. She’ll also continue fishing with Ron, though his bucket of maggots stays far on the other side of the boat from her can of worms. She said she catches his attention while in the boat by “hitting him in the head with a fish” from time to time.

“You think about the things in your head, sitting around watching television. That’s not a life,” Janie said. “Never give up, because it’s never too late.”